Straw: I want to remove curse of knife crime

THIS week Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced that the minimum sentence for knife killers is to be raised from 15 to 25 years, a move applauded by this paper, which has run two high-profile campaigns calling for tougher measures.

AS Justice Secretary, I regularly meet the victims of crime including most poignantly of all bereaved families.

I have seen the devastation that knife crime can cause and listened to the harrowing stories of lives cut needlessly short and of others’ lives torn apart by the loss of a loved one.

That is why my position on this is clear and absolute. Knife crime will not be tolerated.

Just carry a knife and you’ll find the courts increasingly tough, following the instructions of Lord Judge Lord Chief Justice.

Use a knife in anger and expect to be jailed for a very long time.

Newspapers like the Sunday Sun who campaign on these issues are to be praised for hammering home the messages about the misery knife crime can bring.

As a parent, I know that the distress which families of knife-crime victims feel must be almost too much to bear, but I also have been repeatedly struck by the courage and determination they show in the face of such sorrow.

One of the families I met in these tragic circumstances was that of Ben Kinsella, who was murdered on the streets on London in 2008.

His parents asked why the starting point for prison terms for murder with a knife weren’t higher.

It was a question I could not properly answer - until this week when I announced that the starting point for the minimum prison term set by a court for knife killers who take such a weapon onto the street must serve before they are considered for release by the Parole Board will be increased from 15 to 25 years.

This will mean that those who use a knife to murder will typically spend more than a decade longer in prison.

This tougher minimum sentence reflects the extreme and violent nature of such crimes and will leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about how seriously society takes this issue.

Sentencing in individual cases is rightly a matter for the courts, but I am determined that Judges have the power to hand down appropriate sentences to those involved in knife crime.

That is why the Government took action in 2007 to double the maximum sentence just for even carrying a knife from 2 to 4 years.

For those who think they can carry a knife and not get caught - think again. Moreover remember that carrying a knife does not protect you, it actually makes you more likely to be a victim of knife crime.

If you carry a knife there is now more chance than ever of being caught. You are more likely to be stopped and searched You will be arrested and, for the first time, there is now a presumption that you will be prosecuted.

If found guilty, you are three times more likely to go to prison than in 1997, and for a third longer.

The changes I announced this week will mean that, in the future, knife killers will face prison sentences that could be 10 years longer still.

I’ve met some cocky young men who’ve told me that prison can be like a “holiday camp”.

I then meet the same people with pallid careworn faces after just a few months in jail. All their ludicrous bravado has gone.

We treat inmates humanely of course, but prison is not a nice place to be. That’s the idea.

Locked in a cell. 16 hours a day. Every day. Unable to contact family and friends when you want to. Life outside the prison walls moves on, but prison life doesn’t change.

It is partly by introducing tough sentences like these that we have seen crime fall by almost 40 per cent since 1997.

Serious and dangerous criminals are more likely to go to prison, and stay there for longer and the chances of being a victim of crime are the lowest since records began in 1981.

But one victim is one too many. There is clearly much still to do. I want to remove the curse of knife crime from our streets and ensure that no family has to go through what the Kinsellas, and far too many others, have endured.